The Death of Art (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) [Paperback]

Simon Bucher-Jones (Author)

Book Description

Series: Doctor Who | Publication Date: October 1996

In 1880s France, Doctor Who and his companions find themselves caught up in the desperate internal power struggle of a clandestine brotherhood. The future of Europe is at stake, in a war fought with minds and bodies altered to the limits of human evolution.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: London Bridge (Mm) (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0426204816
• ISBN-13: 978-0426204817
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,883,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Death Of Art, April 18, 2007

By 

sleeping sheepsnake "Seth" (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Death of Art (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) (Paperback)

For those of us who loved Doctor Who novels that were published before the onset of the new TV series ruined them--I guess you can't have everything--the best thing was the books' ability to take Doctor Who to a new level of sophistication. I think that the mix of complexity and fun has been picked up and worked into the new show; I think they learned how to make the new show from the fourteen years' worth of books. Style, plus plot, plus complex, believable people struggling with complex, cosmic dilemmas that sometimes only the Doctor fully understands.

I'll take The Death Of Art, for all its deliberate impenetrability, which shows it is better to overstep your bounds from time to time rather than to settle for putting out style-starved, formulaic, risk-free, boring Doctor Who novels that are nothing more than B-grade monster movies with the 9th or 10th Doctor stuck in to save the day. The exception is Only Human, by Gareth Roberts, which saves itself mainly due to style--just as The Death Of Art, definitely a "problem" book, has style, as it depicts two secret societies, The Brotherhood, and a group that has splintered away from them, The Family, wreaking havoc in 1880's France, by utilizing fantastic psionic powers that have dangerous side-effects. Young creative artists mutating into beast-men, gruesome murders hinting at secret-society internal power struggles, sinister Brotherhood members secreted into all levels of French society, teenaged Emil, of the Family, hiding from both sides, a powerful psionic artefact called the Doll House that is stolen back and forth. And finally, a growing threat to the timeline, if the Doctor doesn't get it all sorted out.

Underneath, this glorious mess is a formulaic story: heroes, villains, monsters, action and adventure, surprises, a quest to save the world from inadvertent chaos. But it is Simon Bucher-Jones's STYLE that makes the book a challenge to fully comprehend. He chooses to introduce a whole heap of characters in the middle of some type of secret feud without us really knowing about who's on what side; wha?--The Brotherhood, The Family, The Grandmaster, Montague, Emil, Uncle Johann (large reptile-man), Mirakle, Pierre, Viers...and that's just the weirdos. Then you've got the police, the political types, more supporting characters like Claudette, Jessica, Emil's estranged father, not to mention how companions of the Doctor, Roz (falls into the clutches of the Brotherhood) and Chris (infiltrating the police force and eventually impersonating the Fifth Doctor) get fitted in. While you're getting all that straightened out, there are these constant jumps to the strange world of the Quoth, extra-dimensional aliens caught in some kind of war. Where the heck are these Quoth?

I submit that the main plot gradually becomes clearer as the book unfolds, but not before Bucher-Jones makes it even tougher by infusing the story with constant references to things from all over the Doctor Who mythos: Mynopteran weapons, The Shadow Directory (from the novel Christmas On A Rational Planet), an Ace cameo, lots of nods, and even flashbacks, to the thirtieth-century hi-tech world that Roz and Chris left behind (see the book Original Sin), etc. By this time, the book is overloaded with data, some of it of little relevance to the main plot, and there are so many characters and concepts scattered throughout ever-shifting scenes, that the book is flirting with total failure. Instead, it's a small success.

The Seventh Doctor is quite wonderful here, hiding under a bed in a mental institution to avoid the double-take of a patrolling nurse, turning a handshake with a muscular lizard-man into an arm-wrestling competition and leaving said scaly fella flexing his sore claw in shock, leaping into a void, and certain death, with confidence that a teleporter will materialize just below him, and generally cutting through the confusion while it mounts all around everyone. Roz's brushes with mayhem and villainy are exciting, while Chris's shenanigans are less compelling, and not too relevant until the end.

This formulaic plot stirred into electrified mush at least stands out from mind-numbing snoozefests like Winner Take All and The Feast Of The Damned, recent Who books. I can't really adore The Death Of Art, because it's too much, it's over-saturated with ingredients, it's all jumbled up. But it's got wit, it's got style, and pace, monsters and villains, and even some explanations that start at quark level and work their way up.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A call to 1-800-BAD-BOOK, February 29, 2004

By 

Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Death of Art (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) (Paperback)

*ring*

*ring*

*click*

"Hello, have I reached the DEATH OF ART tech support line? Great. I'd like to register a complaint about my copy of THE DEATH OF ART. Yes. The complaint is that none of it works. No, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a bell, not a whistle, and the only flashing lights are red. Everything that I expect from a novel utterly failed to engage. Is it possible I have a defective copy?

"Yes, actually, I did try rebooting it. Several times. No, no, that didn't seem to help. In fact, that made things much worse. Every time I came back to the book after putting it down for a few hours, the situation had actually deteriorated. The characters were so vague that after leaving them for even a moment, I simply couldn't remember anything about them. I'd open the book again, stare at the page, and couldn't figure out who these people were, what they were doing, or how they got to be where they were.

"Yeah, I did try flipping back to reread portions, but that didn't help either. No, I'm pretty sure it's not me; it's the way it's written. Well, okay, maybe it is me, but the way it's written doesn't do it any favors. Let me explain; do you have a copy in front of you? Open up to a chapter at random. Now, count the number of pages in that chapter. Five and a half? Okay, great. Now, go back and count the number of times that the scene changes. Seven changes, meaning eight different scenes? Okay, great. So, what do those two numbers tell you? Well, in virtually every chapter, the number of scene changes is greater than the number of pages. Almost every sequence starts and concludes in less than a single page! It's like a movie where no scene lasts for more than ten seconds. It's like reading a nervous breakdown! If they gave an award for Attention Deficit Disorder Theatre, this one would clean up. How am I supposed to give a damn about any of these people, when they don't even bother to show up for more than half a page?

"Oh, and how on Earth was I supposed to keep track of anyone when a) they all speak and act totally alike, and b) they all seem to pop in and out of each other's identities. I dunno, maybe you could talk to your engineers and have them include a flowchart in future releases. Well, I think it would be a helpful feature.

"Yes, I suppose it's very possible that some readers found the Quoth aliens to be interesting. But seeing as how I'm not a microscopic alien from a highly stupid plane of reality, I wasn't one of them.

"And what's with the whole Roz "I love you, you ugly alien chick!" thing? And, could you tell me exactly how many oh-so-mysterious secret societies there were? Yeah, I didn't think so... No, no, I'm not blaming you; I couldn't figure it out either. Oh, and how cheap was it to have those major info dumps in the middle of the book? I mean, yes, we definitely need to have the plot explained to the reader, but it seemed a bit of a cheat to have a telepathic character having a mind-meld with the plot outline.

"Well, to get back to the point of my call, it's obvious that my copy is defective and I'd like a refund. Oh, yeah, it's definitely been more than thirty days since I bought the book. But couldn't you make an exception? I mean, no, I don't consider "incomprehensible" and "turgid" to be prose features rather than bugs.

"Well, in that case, I think I should inform you that this load is getting a mighty One Out Of Ten on Shannon Patrick Sullivan's ranking page. The only reason it's not getting a big old goose egg is that there isn't any actual physical scarring I can point to on my person. Emotional scarring, sure. I mean, the next time I fall into the tenth dimension, or see a 19th Century Frenchman suddenly mutate into something pointless, I'm going to have flashbacks from hell, I can tell you."

(The writer of this review would like to thank the late, great MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 show, from which I shamelessly stole the format for this tech support call.)

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Madness, Mutation and Mayhem in 1880's Paris., June 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Death of Art (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) (Paperback)

The Doctor is once again following the path of human psi-powers through history after a message from Ace alerts him to psycho-temporal activity in last-century France. Art students are succumbing to the mysterious Brotherhood who are twisting their bodies and using their minds to enslave an alien race and to gain power. The Doctor and his friends are quickly in the thick of things as events threaten to escalate out of control. Roz finds herself in mortal danger in the sewers beneath Paris, whilst Chris is mistaken for the Doctor by the French police. The Doctor must untangle the convoluted politics and motives belonging to several covert organisations and ensure that Paris doesn't get destroyed in the crossfire. Simon Bucher-Jones' first novel is a bit of a mixed bag. The characters and description are first rate, with the Quoth being another well-drawn culture from the latest set of books. The plot though is rather over-complicated with a confusing political background and an even more confusing web of allegiances. Purists may be disgusted by all of the visceral descriptions and events, but if you stick with it you will be rewarded with a good story.